Broken Windows
by mysticxf
Summary: Similar childhood experiences yield drastically different outcomes.


Lost and its characters belong to JJ Abrams and crew. I'm just borrowing for some non-profit stress relief. Similar childhood experiences yield drastically different outcomes. Jack/Kate, sort of.

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Lost – Broken Windows  
By Mystic  
August 16th 2005

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Jack never liked keeping secrets. Secrets meant lying and Jack didn't lie. He stood outside his house with a baseball bat in his right hand and the bottom of his shirt bunched up in the other. The window stood cracked wide open, pieces of glass still hanging limply from their sliver of a connection to the whole. His mouth closed and he felt his throat swell up with a fear he'd never felt before.

Turning his head, he could see Mark Silverman beating a path towards his house down the street. He imagined a jet trail of smoke behind his best friend and he frowned knowing he'd been abandoned. It was all Silverman's idea, Jack just lent the yard. He'd never hit a baseball before.

The bat was tight in his hands as Mark watched him with that cocky expression he always wore. Mark had one hand pressed against his waist; the other turning an old baseball in his hand. "This is why you never hit the ball, Jack, you're choking the bat."

Jack let the bat swing down from his hand and smack the grass in front of him with the dull pop of aluminum. It wasn't even his bat. It was Mark's. So was the ball, and the gloves that lay discarded at their sides. "How do you choke the bat?" Jack asked incredulously, pursing his lips in frustration.

Mark put his hands up, mimicking him, his tongue stuck out at the side, his eyebrows lowered in painful frustration and his nose flared as wide as his nostrils would go. Jack smiled. Mark dropped his arms again and pointed at the bat with the hand that held the baseball. "Loosen up."

"I won't even make the team," Jack lamented, shaking his head at the ground. "There are guys twice my size trying out."

"Jack, if you just stop trying so hard…" Mark sighed.

He didn't want to, but he couldn't help it.

Kate kept everything secret. Secrets meant no one knew the truth and Kate didn't want people to know the truth. She sat on the highest branch and wiped at her face with the back of her dirt smudged hand while holding tight to the tree with the other. It occurred to her that if she fell and broke either one, she might be let off the hook. He couldn't break what was already broken. A sob escaped her throat and she hiccupped, covering her lips quickly.

Below her, the gravel crunched under Tom's footsteps. The boy with the big eyes and red hair stared up at her looking scared. She knew if she could see herself in a mirror though, she'd be a paler shade of white than he was. It was all his idea anyways, she just got carried away. Just the way she always did.

He'd brought a baseball and dared her to a game of 'Hot Shot' in her front yard. They'd made it up and it was the reason for many days of painful schoolwork in his kitchen. Tom smiled, bringing the ball up, like a professional pitcher and then tossing it gently towards her. "You go first," he told her with a nod of his head.

Kate held the ball in her glove and frowned at him. He always let her go first and he always let her win. She never liked it, it's what boys did when they played with girls because they didn't think girls could win otherwise. "Why don't you go first, this time?" She rolled the ball to him, giving him a sweet innocent smile as she tossed her long braid back over her shoulder.

Tom shook his head and shrugged, lifting the ball off the ground and getting one good kick into the dirt before swinging it roughly at her. Raising her gloved hand, Kate caught it and yelped, then broke into laughter. "That all you got?"

"More than you," he teased.

"Wuss," she shouted, throwing it back hard enough to make him spin on the spot and wince.

Tom shook his head. "I know you can throw harder than that, Katie." He threw the ball back.

Jack swung as hard as he could. The most he expected was the rush of blood to his head as he spun around on the freshly cut grass and landed on his rear end as the ball bounced into the street. But the aluminum gave a shout and Jack felt the weight of the small baseball bounce off its surface. He opened his eyes and just as he started to raise his head towards the sky, he heard the shattering like lightning.

His arms went limp at his sides as Mark took several steps away from the window. Jack kept thinking it through in his head, it was supposed to go up. That's what baseballs did, they went up. They went over houses and into pools. They went into trees, or storm gutters or hit the roof and bounced back.

Silverman was gone before he could finish his breath and Jack dropped the bat onto the ground and felt his eyes burning. The front door swung open and his father stood there a moment, registering that Jack was there before turning away. The man ran onto the porch and examined the window from the outside, running a hand through his hair and then he turned back to Jack.

"Son?"

"Silverman," Jack breathed. "Mark," he turned and pointed and felt his cheeks glow red. He knew he should have continued, he should have explained, but he saw his dad shake his head.

"You couldn't make friends with the chess club, you had to make friends with Mark Silverman," the man almost laughed, but instead he sucked in the grin that was threatening to plague his face and he came to place a hand on Jack's shoulder.

Kate threw the ball so hard she bit the side of her tongue and tasted blood. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. She was used to it. The milliseconds ticked away as she waited to hear Tom give a girlish scream she could make fun of for days. Instead she was greeted with the sound of his gasp, the sharp crack of glass and then, like coins from a piggy bank, she heard it rain down on the wooden porch in front of her house.

Her eyes went wide and she ran faster than she'd ever run in her entire life. Straight up the old tree on the edge of the farm. Tom couldn't catch up and he wouldn't tell on her. She was sure of it. Her shoulders heaved with each breath she took and Kate watched Tom come and go and watched the sun set and listened. If she listened hard enough, she would hear her father shout her name. It carried on the wind like a curse seeking her out.

Scanning the horizon, she wondered how far she'd get if she left. Kate knew the answer – not very. Seeing the dark grey truck rolling over the bumps on the road, she gripped the tree branches and started her descent knowing it was easier if you just gave in. Her feet hit the ground when the door slammed shut and she could hear the gently chugging of the engine as his boots dug into the ground and his body passed in front of the headlights.

Lie Kate, tell him Tom did it. She bit her bottom lip, watching the man who walked to her with his fists tight at his side. "You broke the window, didn't you sweetheart." His tone was sour; she could hear his breath ragged as he controlled himself.

Her head rose. Things were better when you saw them coming, she knew. His eyes scanned her face and she knew if she tried, she could hide the guilt and play like she'd been in the tree all afternoon just wasting away the day like she always did. But instead, she found herself nodding. "Yeah, dad, I broke the window."

She wished she'd been able to say it. To finish the sentence, but the first word was all it took. His hand met her cheek and Kate knew when her father had been a child, he'd have won 'Hot Shot' on the first throw.

Jack sat on the edge of his bed and pondered the consequences of the lie. His father always thought Mark was a bad kid. At the beginning of every school year, he'd proclaim this would be the last year for their friendship. Jack was beginning to think he only kept it to prove the man wrong. Now his father was on the phone to Mark's father. Mark would get a stern lecture and he'd take it because he was Jack's best friend.

Mark would have to pay to have the window replaced. Jack knew he'd been working all summer mowing lawns to get a new bike. Jack already had the cash laid out on his bed next to him. He'd slip it to Mark, it was only right. So what if Jack didn't get a new bike for the new school year. He rolled the ball from one hand to the other and sighed as the moonlight slipped behind a cloud. He didn't like keeping secrets, he never did.

Kate leaned against the frame of the porch and wondered why she told him the truth. It was so easy to lie, she knew. She could have said it was some local kids. Kate did tend to attract the bad boys. Kate could have given her father names and numbers.

She rolled the ball around in her left hand, her right was tucked under her breast, still pulsing from the game her father had forced her to teach him. She let the ball slip off her fingertips and land with a soft thud in the dirt at the bottom of the porch. Kate felt her lower lip tremble and she flexed the fingers of her right hand, wincing. It was easier to keep secrets, Kate decided. Far easier to tell the lies, she convinced herself. And when her mother asked her if she was alright, she told her yes and smiled as the woman beckoned her back into the house.

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Finis 


End file.
